The Harmony of the Spheres: The Pythagorean Tradition in Music

I

CLASSICAL

1

Plato

c. 429–347 B.C.E.

Although Plato wrote his dialogue Timaeus some thirty years later than the Republic, the conversation it records is supposed to have taken place on the following day. The main speaker is Timaeus, a Pythagorean philosopher from Locri in southern Italy, and his subjects are the creation of the World-Soul, the structure of the elements, and the workings of the human body.

This passage concerning the making of the World-Soul by the Demiurge, or creator god, has rightly been called the most perplexing and difficult of the whole dialogue,¹ for it is an inextricable blend of mathematics and music, astronomy and metaphysics. Even in Plato’s own century it was a cause of dispute among his successors at the Athenian Academy.

Among the modern guides, A. E. Taylor and Francis M. Cornford have approached the work from a basis of solid classical erudition. Cornford² sees this passage as primarily cosmological, and imagines Plato as having composed it with the visual aid of an armillary sphere or skeleton model of the cosmic orbits. Ernest McClain,³ on the other hand, reads it as a musical myth, fitting naturally within the context of the ancient obsession with tuning systems that McClain has traced through Babylon, India, and China, as well as through all the works of Plato that deal in number. Plato would thus have used not the sphere but the monochord, an aural aid. Both these interpretations are elaborate and persuasive, being carried through consistently to the last detail.

Another independent researcher, John Michell,⁴ finds that the Timaeus scale encodes and confirms the ancient canon of number, which Michell in his turn has unearthed in megalithic monuments and Gothic cathedrals, as well as in the Greek language itself. But for Proclus (see no. 12 of this sourcebook), whose commentary on the Timaeus is the most extensive to survive from the Academy, Plato’s intentions were to be interpreted in the light of Orphic and Chaldaean theology, and his subject as the generation of the Gods.

Perhaps the Timaeus should be classed with those revealed scriptures, which seem to act as universal reflectors: each commentator projects onto such a work his own preoccupations and beliefs, and each receives from it perfect confirmation. One interpretation does not contradict another: each is valid in proportion to its interpreter’s intellect and motives, and in the case of the five commentators named here, there is no question that these are of the highest. The notes are intended purely to make Plato’s story more comprehensible.

The Timaeus, as it turned out, was the only Platonic dialogue that never sank into oblivion in the West. During the Dark and Middle Ages its first and most essential part was known in the Latin version of Calcidius (see no. 10). This freak of survival was probably the single most important fact in the transmission of the doctrines of cosmic and psychic harmony.

I use here the translation of Thomas Taylor (1758-1835), in homage to one who carried the torch of Platonism through another dark age, that of Regency England. Whatever the archaic qualities of his English style, one can be sure that he penetrated as deeply into the meaning of Plato’s text as anyone in the modern age.

Source: The Works of Plato, translated by Thomas Taylor (London, 1804), vol. 2, pp. 484–488.

The Demiurge Fashions the World-Soul

[35a] From an essence impartible, and always subsisting according to sameness of being, and from a nature divisible about bodies, he mingled from both a third form of essence, having a middle subsistence between the two.⁵ And again, between that which is impartible and that which is divisible about bodies, he placed the nature of same and different. And taking these, now they are three, he mingled them all into one idea. But as the nature of different could not without difficulty be mingled in same, he harmonized them together by employing force in their conjunction.⁶ [35b] But after he had mingled these two with essence, and had produced one from the three, he again divided this whole into becoming parts; at the same time mingling each part from same, different, and essence. But he began to divide as follows: –In the first place, he received one part from the whole. Then he separated a second part, double of the first; afterwards a third, sesquialters of the second, but triple of the first: then a fourth, double of the second; in the next place a fifth, triple of the third; a sixth, octuple of the first; [35c] and lastly a seventh, twenty-seven times more than the first.⁷ After this, he filled up the double and triple intervals, [36a] again cutting off parts from the whole; and placed them so between the intervals, that there might be two mediums in every interval; and that one of these might by the same part exceed one of the extremes, and be exceeded by the other;⁸ and that the other part might by an equal number surpass one of the extremes, and by an equal number be surpassed by the other.⁹ But as from hence sesquialter, sesquitertian, and sesquioctave intervals were produced,¹⁰ from those bonds in the first spaces, [36b] he filled with a sesquioctave interval all the sesquitertian parts, at the same time leaving a part of each of these.¹¹ And then again the interval of this part being assumed, a comparison is from thence obtained in terms of number to number, subsisting between 256 and 243.¹² But now the whole of that mixture from which these were separated was consumed by such a section of parts. Hence he then cut the whole of this composition according to length, and produced two from one; and adapted middle to middle, like the form of the letter X. Afterwards he bent them into a circle, [36c] connecting them, both with themselves and with each other, in such a manner that their extremities might be combined in one directly opposite to the point of their mutual intersection; and externally comprehended them in a motion revolving according to sameness, and in that which is perpetually the same.¹³ And besides this, he made one of the circles external, but the other internal; and denominated the local motion of the exterior circle, the motion of that nature which subsists according to sameness; but that of the interior one, the motion of the nature subsisting according to difference. He likewise caused the circle partaking of sameness to revolve laterally towards the right hand; but that which partakes of difference diametrically towards the left. But he conferred dominion on the circulation of that which is same and similar: [36d] for he suffered this alone to remain undivided. But as to the interior circle, when he had divided it six times, and had produced seven unequal circles, each according to the interval of the double and triple; as each of the intervals being three;¹⁴ he ordered the circles to proceed in a course contrary to each other:—and three of the seven interior circles he commanded to revolve with a similar swiftness; but the remaining four with a motion dissimilar to each other,¹⁵ and to the former three; yet so as not to desert order and proportion in their circulations.

After, therefore, the whole composition of the soul was completed according to the intention of its artificer, in the next place he fabricated within soul the whole of a corporeal nature; and, conciliating middle with middle, he aptly harmonized them together. [36e] But soul being every way extended from the middle to the very extremities of the universe, and investing it externally in a circle, at the same time herself revolving within herself, gave rise to the divine commencement of an unceasing and wise life, through the whole of time. [37a] And, indeed, the body of the universe was generated visible; but soul is invisible, participating of a rational energy and harmony,¹⁶ and subsisting as the best of generated natures, through its artificer, who is the best of intelligible and perpetual beings.

2

Pliny the Elder

23 or 24–79 C.E.

On his retirement from military service, Gaius Plinius Secundus devoted himself to writing historical chronicles and making a collection of universal knowledge. The resulting work, a Natural History in thirty-seven books, is a stupendous achievement, and would supply scientists and philosophers with material until well into the seventeenth century. Pliny died accidentally while observing the interesting natural phenomenon of the eruption of Vesuvius.

In the first extract, Pliny expresses skepticism about the planetary music, while the second introduces us to the tangled skein of planet-tone theories. These are based not on their relative speeds, as in Cicero’s conception (see Macrobius, no. 11), but on their distances, as if one were to stretch strings from the earth to each planet’s sphere or orbit. In a later chapter, (II, xxi), Pliny denigrates all efforts to ascertain these distances, recommending geometrical inference as the only method likely to produce results, and then only conjectural ones. But curiously enough, he does not record any of these results, except those of Pythagoras, whom he dignifies as a man of sagacious mind. Stranger still, he shows at the end of the book that he had access to the canon of exact measurements, at least of the earth’s dimensions (see the mention of John Michell’s work in note 3). Knowledge of this kind was a closely guarded secret, and it is impossible to penetrate the proverbial Pythagorean silence that veils the true opinions of that school. The symbolism of the Pythagorean theories given here, however, is quite plain: the sun is equidistant from the earth and the stars, whether the distances are reckoned as 378,000 stades or as a musical fifth.

Source: Pliny the Elder, Natural History (Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb edition, 1938), vol. I, pp. 172–174, 226–228. Translated by the Editor.

What Tones the Pythagoreans Assign to the Spheres

II, iii. This form,¹ then, is eternal and unceasing in its revolution, turning with indescribable speed in the space of twenty-four hours, as the sun’s rising and setting leave us in no doubt. Whether the sound of such a vast mass whirling in its ceaseless rotation is so loud as to exceed the capacity of the ear, I cannot easily say—no more, by Hercules, than whether there is at the same time a tinkling of the stars as they turn around with it, revolving in their orbits—nor whether it makes sweet music of incredible beauty. To us, who live within it, the world glides silently day and night.

xix. Many people have also attempted to discover the distances of the stars from the earth, and have proclaimed that the sun is nineteen times as far from the moon as the moon is from the earth.² Pythagoras, however, a man of knowing soul, made the distance from the earth to the moon 126,000 stades,³ from the moon to the sun twice as much, and from the sun to the twelve signs (of the Zodiac) three times. Our countryman Gallus Sulpicius was also of the same opinion.

xx. But sometimes Pythagoras, using musical theory,⁴ calls the distance from the earth to the moon a whole-tone, from the moon to Mercury half as much, the same from Mercury to Venus, a tone and a half from Venus to the Sun, a tone from the Sun to Mars (i.e., the same as from the earth to the moon), half a tone from Mars to Jupiter, half a tone from Jupiter to Saturn, and a tone and a half from Saturn to the Zodiac. Thus it makes seven whole-tones, which they call the harmony diapason, i.e., a universal harmony. Saturn moves therein at the Dorian pitch,⁵ Jupiter at the Phrygian, and the others similarly—but this is more of a playful subtlety than a necessary one.

3

Nicomachus of Gerasa

lived between 50 and 150 C.E.

Nicomachus was a native of Jerash, now in Jordan, and an important figure in the popular Neopythagorean movement of the first and second centuries. His Introduction to Arithmetic would later serve as a model for Boethius (see no. 13) and a standard textbook for the medieval Christian and Islamic worlds. Proclus (see no. 12) considered Nicomachus his own former incarnation, and the Neoplatonists in general adopted Nicomachean mathematics with its arithmology and distinctive classification of numbers.

The Enchiridion harmonices (Textbook of Harmony) was an elementary work, a sketch written for an educated lady with the promise of a more detailed commentary to follow. (Probably the latter survives in Boethius’ work.) This extract shows the breadth of Nicomachus’ harmonic thought, embracing everything in the universal matrix of the musical Tetraktys (6:8:9:12 or the interval-sequence E' B A E) and the diatonic scale that fills it out: the movements of the planets, the acoustics of instruments, Pythagoras’ discoveries, experiments, and innovations, and Plato’s creation of the World-Soul. The harmony of tone with number became, for the Pythagoreans, a kind of Grand Unified Theory: an archetype of the harmony which permeates and unites both the greater and the lesser world.

For all the problems that Nicomachus poses when examined in detail (see the notes), his story of Pythagoras is the stuff not of mere history but of genuine myth. It records the semidivine origin of harmonic knowledge, replete with hints of deeper meaning. What were these four blacksmiths making, as they presided over the birth of Greek experimental science? Was Pythagoras’ visit to their subterranean forge an initiation, or an initiatic vision? And again, in his experiment at home, do we not have an image of the Lambdoma, the diagram of the Timaeus numbers, in this angle formed by two walls with its single nail as the unitive point where all lines meet? (See von Thimus, no. 49.)

Source: Nicomacque de Gerase, Manuel d’harmonique, translated by Charles-Emile Ruelle in Collection des auteurs grecs rélatifs à la musique (Paris: Baur, 1881), pp. 13–26. Translated by the Editor.

The Scale and the Planets

Chapter III. 10. The names of sounds must have been borrowed from the seven stars which traverse the sky and circle around the earth. In fact they say that all bodies which whirl around in a very fluid and yielding motion must needs produce noises which differ from each other according to their size, the speed of their sound, and their position; that is to say, according to their own sounds, their own speeds, and the media in which the revolution of each body is accomplished, depending on whether these media are more fluid or more resistant.¹ 11. They point out clearly these same three differences in the case of the planets, which are distinguished from one another by size, speed, and position, and which circle without respite, whistling in the ethereal vapor. 12. It is precisely because of this that they are called by the name of aster, as one might say ‘restless’ or ‘ever-running’ (aie theon), whence are formed the words theos (God) and aither (ether).²

13. Now, because of the movement of Cronos, which is the planet situated the furthest above us, the lowest sound in the octave is called hypate, for hypaton signifies the most elevated.³ 14. Because of the orbit of the Moon, placed the lowest in rank and the nearest to the Earth, we say neate, nete, for neaton signifies the lowest. 15. Of the two stars situated on either side, to that of Zeus, beneath Cronos, corresponds the parhypate; to the other, Aphrodite’s, situated above the Moon, corresponds the paranete. 16. The most central star, which is the Sun, in the fourth place counting from either end, becomes the origin of the mese, placed at the interval of a fourth from each end in the ancient heptachord, just as the Sun is fourth in rank among the seven planets counting from each extreme, for it occupies the middle point. 17. Of the two stars situated on either side of the Sun, to the one, Ares, to whom belongs the sphere placed between Zeus and the Sun, corresponds the hypermese, also called lichanos; to the other, Hermes, placed midway between Aphrodite and the Sun, corresponds the paramese.

18. We will corroborate these ideas for you with more precision and more fully by adding linear and numerical proofs in the commentaries which we have already promised you, O most wise and enlightened of women; and we will tell you the reason why we ourselves do not hear this cosmic symphony emitting sweet and utterly harmonious accents, as tradition⁴ relates. But now, for lack of time, we must continue.

Acoustics

Chapter IV. 19. We say generally that sound is an uninterrupted percussion of the air which reaches as far as the auditive sense; that a note is a tension without dimension of the melodic voice; that tension is a state and an identity, like size, of a note without interval. 20. The interval is the path traversed from low to high and vice versa; the [scale-] system, a collection of several intervals. If several attacks or a strong wind happen to strike the surrounding air at several points, a loud note results; a weak one, if there are few attacks or little wind. If the attacks or the wind are regular and of constant force, the note will be consistent; if they are unequal, it will be uneven. If they strike slowly it will be low; if rapidly, it will be high. The effect produced will necessarily be inverse in wind instruments such as flutes, trumpets, the syrinx, hydraulus, etc., and otherwise in the stringed instruments: cithara, lyre, spadix, and the like. There also appear to be intermediate instruments, leaning to the one or the other or rendering similar effects: the monochords, commonly called pandoras and, by the Pythagoreans, canons; the trigons among stringed instruments, the plagiaules (transverse flutes), and the photinx, as will appear in the continuation of our discourse.

21. In stringed instruments, greater tension produces louder and higher sounds, and weaker tension slower and lower sounds. In fact, when the plectrum displaces the strings, these are drawn out of their normal position and, as they return, hit the surrounding air at many points with a very great rapidity and a strong vibratory movement, as if excited by the actual energy of their tension. Then they return to rest and their vibration ceases, after the manner of a mason’s plumb-line. 22. In wind instruments, on the contrary, the bigger bores and lengths produce a slow and relaxed note, because the wind escapes into the surrounding air after having exhausted its intensity on its long journey; it strikes and agitates it in an almost insensible fashion, and consequently the note produced is low.

23. We must consider here that ‘more’ and ‘less’ are dependent upon our own quantitative contribution, whether in blowing an aulos hard or soft, or in making the strings longer or shorter. It is evident that all this is numerically regulated, for it is agreed that quantity can properly be applied only to number.

The Discoveries of Pythagoras

Chapter V.⁵ 24. Pythagoras was the first who sought to avoid the middle note of the conjunct tetrachords (being the same distance—a fourth—from the two extremes hypate and nete), in order to obtain a more varied system, as we may suppose, and also to make the extremes themselves produce the most satisfying consonance, the octave-ratio of 2:1.⁶ This could not be the case with the existing tetrachords. He therefore intercalated an eighth note between the mese and paramese and fixed it at the distance of a whole tone from the mese, a semitone from the paramese. In this way, the string which previously represented the paramese in the heptachordal lyre was still called trite—‘third,’ counting from the nete—and still occupies this position, while the intercalated string was fourth from the nete and sounds a fourth with it: a consonance which was originally sounded between the mese and hypate.

25. The note [B] placed between these two—the mese and the intercalated string—received the name of the former paramese, and according to whether it was joined to one or the other tetrachord, was sometimes more ‘netoid’ (if joined to the upper tetrachord), sometimes more ‘hypatoid’ (joined to the top of the lower one). It furnished the consonance of a fifth, marking the limits of a system formed by the tetrachord itself plus the added tone. Thus the sesquialtera ratio [3:2] of the fifth is acknowledged as the sum of the sesquitertia and the sesquioctave or whole-tone [4:3 times 9:8].

Chapter VI. 26. As for the numerical quantity which represents the distance of the strings sounding the fourth, fifth, and their sum the octave—in fact the additional note placed between the two tetrachords—here is how Pythagoras is said to have reported its discovery.⁷

27. One day he was out walking, lost in his reflections and in the thoughts which his schemes suggested to him, wondering whether he could invent an aid for the ear, secure and free from error, such as the senses of sight and touch possess, the one in the compass, the rule, or even, we may say, in the dioptra;⁸ the other in the scales or in the invention of measures. He happened by a providential coincidence to pass by a blacksmith’s workshop, and heard there quite clearly the iron hammers striking on the anvil and giving forth confusedly intervals which, with the exception of one, were perfect consonances. He recognized among these sounds the consonances of the diapason (octave), diapente (fifth), and diatessaron (fourth). As for the interval between the fourth and the fifth, he noticed that it was in itself dissonant, but otherwise complementary to the greater of these two consonances. 28. Thrilled, he entered the shop as if a god were aiding his plans, and after various experiments discovered that it was the difference of weights that caused the differences of pitch, and not the effort of the blacksmiths, nor the shape of the hammers, nor the movement of the worked iron. With the greatest care he ascertained the weights of the hammers and their impulsive force, which he found perfectly identical, then returned home.

29. He fixed a single nail in the angle formed by two walls, in order to avoid even here the slightest difference, and lest a number of nails having each their own substance might invalidate the experiment. From this nail he hung four strings identical in substance, number of threads, thickness, and torsion, and suspended from the lower end of each of them a weight. He made the lengths of the strings, moreover, exactly the same, then, plucking them together two by two, he heard the above-mentioned consonances which varied with each pair of strings. 30. The string stretched by the greatest weight, compared to that which supported the smallest, sounded the interval of an octave. Now the former represented 12 units of the given weight, and the latter 6. He thus proved that the octave is in duple ratio, as the weights themselves had made him suspect. The greatest string compared to the next smallest, representing 8 units, sounded the fifth, and he proved that they were in sesquitertia ratio, that being the ratio of the weights. Then he compared it to the next one, with regard to the weight it supported. The larger of the two other strings, having 9 units, sounded the fourth; so he established that it was in the inverse sesquitertia ratio, and that this same string was in sesquialtera ratio to the smallest—for 9 to 6 is the same ratio, just as the second smallest string with 8 units is in sesquitertia ratio to the one of 6 units, and in sesquialtera ratio to the one of 12 units.

31. Consequently, the interval between the fifth and the fourth—the amount by which the fifth exceeds the fourth—was confirmed as being in the sesquioctave ratio, 9:8. The octave was the system formed by the union of one and the other, namely the fifth and the fourth placed side by side. So the double ratio is composed of the sesquialtera and sesquitertia, 12:8:6; or, inversely, by the union of the fourth and fifth, so that the octave is composed of the sesquitertia and sesquialtera in this order, 12:9:6.

32. After having exercised his hand and his ear in the study of the suspended weights, and having established from these weights the ratios of the proportions stated, he ingeniously transferred the results obtained through strings hung on a nail placed in the angle of a wall to the soundboard of an instrument he called ‘cordotone,’ in which the tension, raised to a point proportional to that which the weights produced, passed to the movement of pegs placed in the upper part. Once installed on this terrain, and possessing, as it were, an infallible gnomon, he enlarged his experiment by making it on different instruments: for example, by striking vases, on flutes, syrinxes, monochords, trigons, and suchlike. He invariably found the numerical determination consonant and reliable. 33. He called the note corresponding to the number 6 hypate; the note of 8, a sesquitertia above, mese; the note of 9, a tone higher than the mean and consequently is sesquioctave, paramese; and finally 12 he called nete. Then he supplied intermediary points according to the diatonic genus, by means of proportional notes, and thus bound the octachord lyre to the consonant numbers, namely the double, the sesquialtera, the sesquitertia, and the difference between the latter pair, the sesquioctave.⁹

Chapter VII. 34. Pythagoras recognized in the following way, by virtue of natural necessity, the progression of sounds from the lowest to the highest, following this same diatonic genus; for the chromatic and enharmonic he described afterward, as we will explain one day. So this diatonic genus seems to have by nature certain degrees and certain progressions of which the details are as follows. A semitone, a tone, a tone, which form a system of a fourth, composed of two tones plus what is called a semitone;¹⁰ then by the addition of another tone (the intercalated one), there results the system of a fifth composed of three tones plus a semitone. Next there follow a semitone, a tone, a tone: another system of a fourth, which is sesquitertia. 35. Thus in the heptachordal lyre, previous to this one, every fourth note starting from the lowest one was always a fourth away, the semitone occupying by turns, according to its placement, the first degree, the middle degree, and the third degree of the tetrachord. But in the Pythagorean or octachordal lyre, there is either—in the case of conjunction—a system composed of a tetrachord and a pentachord, or—in the case of disjunction—two tetrachords separated by the interval of a tone. Thus the progression from the lowest string will be such that every fifth note is consonant by the interval of a fifth, the semitone occupying by turns four different degrees: the first, second, third, and fourth.

The Means in Plato’s Timaeus

Chapter VIII. 36. Having come thus far, it is time for us to comment on the passage of the Psychogony where Plato expresses himself in these words:¹¹

He placed them so between the intervals, that there might be two means in every interval; and that one of these might by the same fraction exceed one of the extremes, and be exceeded by the other; and that the other might by an equal number surpass one of the extremes, and by an equal number be surpassed by the other. He (the Demiurge) filled the distance which separates the sesquialtera and sesquitertia intervals with the interval of the sesquioctave.

37. These are in fact the double interval, that is the ratio of 12 to 6, and the two means, which are the number 9 and the number 8. The number 8, in harmonic proportion, is the mean between 6 and 12, being superior to 6 by a third and inferior to 12 by a third of that number 12. This is why (Plato) says that it is by the same fraction, considered in relation to the extremes themselves, that the mean 8 is respectively superior and inferior; for as the ratio of the greatest term is to the least, namely double, so the difference of the greatest to the mean, a difference which is 4, is to the difference of this mean to the smallest, a difference which is 2; and in effect their differences are in double ratio as 4 to 2. 38. The proper character of this mean is such that the sum of the extremes multiplied by the mean gives a product double the product of the extremes. In fact, 8 times the sum of the extremes which is 18 makes 144, double the product of the extremes, which is 72.

39. The other mean, 9, placed in the paramese position, is considered as the arithmetical mean between the extremes, being 3 less than 12 and 3 more than 6. Its proper character is such that the sum of the extremes is double this mean, and the square of the mean, which is 81, is superior to the product of the extremes by a quantity equal to the exact square of their mutual difference, namely to 9, the square of 3, which is their difference. 40. One can also demonstrate the third proportion, which is ‘proportion’ truly so called, in the two mean terms 9 and 8; for 12 is to 8 as 9 is to 6; these two ratios are sesquialtera, and the product of the extremes is equal to the product of the means, 6 times 12 being equal to 9 times 8.

4

Theon of Smyrna

fl. 115–140 C.E.

Theon’s only surviving work is intended as a first step toward the studies recommended to philosophers by Plato in Book VII of his Republic: Arithmetic, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry (Stereometry), Astronomy, and Harmonics. It is clear even from the elementary parts of Theon’s treatise—which may have been all that he completed—that he viewed mathematics not as a self-sufficient science but as an entry to the world of real, divine, and almost personified numbers which, in the Pythagorean and Platonic worldview, embody the ultimate laws of the universe.

In the introduction to his second book, on music, Theon says that after having finished our treatise on all mathematics, we will add to it a dissertation on the harmony of the world, and will not hesitate to relate what our predecessors have discovered, nor to make more widely known the Pythagorean traditions which we have inherited, without ourselves claiming to have discovered the least part of it. And at the end of Book III he promises a summary of his own work and that of Thrasyllus, the Emperor Tiberius’ astrologer. Unfortunately we have no further material of this sort. Our extracts present only an outline of how an early Platonic commentator understood these sciences, and a summary of some planet-tone theories from the book on Astronomy. Theon’s doubts with regard to these, and the poverty of his sources, make one the more curious as to what he would himself have written about the harmony of the world.

Source: Theon of Smyrna, Mathematics Useful for Understanding Plato, translated by Robert and Deborah Lawlor from the edition of J. Dupuis (San Diego: Wizard’s Bookshelf, 1979), pp. 11–12, 91–94. Used by kind permission of the publisher.

On the Order in which Mathematics Must Be Studied

Book I, Chapter 2. We are going to begin with the arithmetic theorems which are very closely connected with the musical theorems which are transposed into numbers. We have no need for a musical instrument, as Plato himself explains, when he says that it is not necessary to agitate the strings of an instrument (with hand to ear) like curious folk trying to overhear something. [Republic 531a-b] What we desire is to understand harmony and the celestial music; we can only examine this harmony after having studied the numerical laws of sounds. When Plato says that music occupies the fifth rung (in the study of mathematics), he speaks of the celestial music which results from the movement, the order and the harmony of the stars which travel in space.¹ But we must give the mathematics of music second place after arithmetic, as Plato wished, since one can understand nothing of celestial music if one does not understand that which has its foundation in numbers and in reason. Then so that the numerical principles of music can be connected to the theory of abstract numbers, we will give them the second rung, in order to facilitate our study.

According to the natural order, the first science will be that of numbers, which is called arithmetic. The second is that whose object is surfaces and is called geometry.² The third, called stereometry, is the study of solid objects. The fourth treats of solids in movement and this is astronomy. As for music, whose object is to consider the mutual relations of the movements and intervals, whatever these relations be, it is not possible to understand it before having grasped what is based on numbers. Thus in our plan, the numerical laws of music will come immediately after arithmetic; but following the natural order, this music which consists in studying the harmony of the worlds will come in fifth place. Now, according to the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, the numbers are, so to say, the principle, the source and the root of all things.³

The Order of the Planets and the Celestial Concert

Book II, Chapter 15. Here are the opinions of certain Pythagoreans relative to the position and the order of the spheres or circles on which the planets are moving. The circle of the moon is closest to the earth, that of Hermes is second above, then comes that of Venus, that of the sun is fourth, next come those of Mars and Jupiter, and that of Saturn is last and closest to that of the distant stars. They determine, in fact, that the orbit of the sun occupies the middle place between the planets as being the heart of the universe and most able to command. Here is a declaration of Alexander of Aetolia:⁴

The spheres rise higher and higher;

the divine Moon is the nearest to the Earth;

the second is Stilbon, ‘the shining one,’ star of Hermes, the inventor of the lyre;

next comes Phosphorus, brilliant star of the goddess of Cythera (Venus);

above is the Sun whose chariot is drawn by horses, occupying the fourth rung,

Pyrois, star of the deadly Mars of Thrace, is fifth;

Phaeton, shining star of Jupiter, is sixth;

and Phenon, star of Saturn, near the distant stars, is seventh.

The seven spheres give the seven sounds of the lyre and produce a harmony (that is to say, an octave), because of the intervals which separate them from one another.

According to the doctrine of Pythagoras, the world being indeed harmoniously ordained, the celestial bodies which are distant from one another according to the proportions of consonant sounds, create, by the movement and speed of their revolutions, the corresponding harmonic sounds. It is for this reason that Alexander thus expresses himself in the following verse:⁵

The Earth at the center gives the low sound of the hypate;

the starry sphere gives the conjunct nete;

the Sun placed in the middle of the errant stars gives the mese;

the crystal sphere gives the fourth in relation to it;

Saturn is lowest by a half-tone;

Jupiter diverges as much from Saturn as from the terrible Mars;

the Sun, joy of mortals, is one tone below;

Venus differs from the dazzling sun by a trihemitone;

Hermes continues with a half-tone lower than Venus;

then comes the Moon which gives to nature such varying hue;

and finally, the Earth at the center gives the fifth with respect to the Sun; and this position has five regions, from wintry to torrid,

accommodating itself to the most intense heat, as to the most glacial cold.

The heavens, which contain six tones, complete the octave.

The son of Jupiter, Hermes, represents a Siren to us,

having a seven-stringed lyre, the image of this divine world.

In these verses Alexander has indicated the order for the spheres that he has determined. It is evident that he arbitrarily imagined the intervals which separate them, and nearly all the rest. Indeed, he says that the seven-stringed lyre, the image of the universe, was constructed by Hermes, and that it gives the consonances of the octave; then he established the harmony of the world with nine sounds which, however, include only six tones.

It is true that he attributes the sound of the hypate, as being lower than the others, to the earth; but being immobile at the center, it renders absolutely no sound. Then he gives the sound of the conjunct nete to the sphere of the stars, and places the seven sounds of the planets between the two. He attributes the sound of the mese to the sun. The hypate does not give the sound of the fifth with the mese, but that of the fourth, and it is not with the nete of the conjuncts that it gives the consonance of the octave, but with the nete of disjuncts.

The system does not conform to the diatonic type, since the melody of that genus allows for neither a complete trihemitone interval, nor two half-tones one after the other. Neither is it chromatic, for in the chromatic genus, the melody does not include the unbroken tone. If it be said that the system is formed of the two genera I would answer that it is not melodious to have more than two half-tones following one another. But all of this is unclear to those who are not initiated into music.

Eratosthenes, in a similar manner, exposes the harmony produced by the revolution of the stars, but he does not assign the same order to them.⁶ After the moon which is above the earth, he gives the second place to the sun. He says that in fact Mercury, still young, having invented the lyre, first rose up to the sky, and passing near the stars called errant, he was astonished that the harmonies produced by the speeds of their revolutions were the same as those of the lyre which he had constructed. In the epic verses, this author appears to leave the earth immobile and determines that there are eight sounds produced by the starry sphere and by the seven spheres of the planets which he makes circle around the earth. It is for this reason that he made an eight-stringed lyre including the consonances of the octave. This explanation fares better than that of Alexander.

The mathematicians establish neither this nor that order among the planets. After the moon, they place the sun, and some put Hermes beyond it, then Venus, and others put Venus, then Hermes. They arrange the other planets in the order we have mentioned.

5

Ptolemy

fl. 127–148 C.E.

Claudius Ptolemaeus, the great Alexandrian astronomer, was a scientist of universal scope. His works on astronomy (the Almagest), astrology (the Tetrabiblos), and geography became standard texts for the Arabic, Byzantine, and Western Middle Ages. After Aristotle, he was the major scientific authority for the medieval period.

The first and second books of Ptolemy’s Harmonics are an ordinary treatise on scales and intervals. With the third chapter of Book III, the tone suddenly changes to that of a fantasia on psychic and cosmic harmony. If, as is suggested, he was prevented by death from completing the work, what are we to make of this as the swan song of Antiquity’s greatest astronomer? Commentators from Kepler to the present have been embarrassed by it, calling it ingenious nonsense. But Kepler himself suffered the same posthumous verdict on what he considered the crown of his work, his explanation of the eliptical planetary orbits through musical harmony. Does each age simply have its own distinctive nonsense?

At the beginning of this section, Ptolemy is quite eloquent about the wonder and the awe which the study of harmonics arouses. As our whole collection demonstrates, whose who have devoted themselves intensively to it often believe that they have discovered the key to the universe. In some respects it is a different key for each one—and it is this personal dimension that may later be ridiculed—while in other respects the key is always the same, unlocking the doors of insight into a numbered and harmonious universe, in which microcosm and macrocosm reflect in time and space endless variations on a central theme. The conviction through intuitive perception that this is so is the core of the matter. After that, the theorist hears harmonies everywhere, just as some mystics see God in everything.

As a single example, consider Ptolemy’s sevens. At the end of Book III, Chapter 5, he correlates the seven faculties of the soul and the seven virtues of reason with the seven notes of the scale. To one who has had a direct intuition of the meaning of Seven, every sevenfold grouping will become transparent, and the soul’s divisions will reveal it no less than the planets and the notes of the scale. One is then no longer playing number games, but pointing to the basic truth that whenever sevens appear, the archetypal Seven is manifest in them.

This mode of thinking and experience is unfamiliar today, but has to be taken seriously if a man of Ptolemy’s stature is not simply to be judged more gullible than ourselves. If this imaginative leap can be made, his chapters on cosmic correspondences will be read as the report of a man for whom every number struck an inner tone, every proportion a chord; every movement in the pure circular form proper to the souls of men and stars resonated as the two-octave matrix of audible harmony.

Source: Ptolemy, Harmonics, German translation by Ingemar Düring in his Ptolemaios und Porphyrios über die Musik (Göteborg: Elanders, 1934), pp. 114–136. Translated by the Editor, with reference also to the Latin translation of John Wallis, Claudii Ptolemaei Harmonicorum Libri Tres (Oxford, 1682; repr. Broude).

How Should We Relate the Power of Harmony to Its Doctrine?

Book III, Chapter 3. I think I have sufficiently demonstrated that the harmonic intervals up to the emmeleis¹ are intrinsically defined by certain fundamental ratios, and have also answered the question of which ratio belongs to each of them. Anyone who has concerned himself deeply with the perceptual cause of our reckonings, as well as with their practical investigations—i.e., with the methods I have discussed for using the monochord—can no longer doubt that in all tunings the corroboration of the ear holds good. The natural consequence is that anyone who has practiced these calculations, if he retains any feeling for beauty, must be amazed at the power and beauty dwelling within harmonies; yet this is something which also agrees completely with the calculations of the intellect, and with the greatest precision discovers and produces the tunings in practical use. He will also be seized as it were by a holy yearning to behold and understand the true relationship in which this power stands to other phenomena in our world. Therefore we will try to treat this last part of our scientific task in the broadest possible way, so as to give expression to the sublimity of this wonderful power.

The principles of all beings are Matter, Movement, and Form: Matter as the material of their origin, Movement as their cause, and Form as their purpose. The power of harmony cannot be regarded as an object: it is something active, not receiving impressions from without—nor as a goal, because it already possesses something: harmonic and rhythmic rightness, or order and beauty according to rules—but as a cause which orders material and gives it natural form.

Causes, too, are divided into three main categories: the first refers to Nature and to mere being, the second to Reason and a good condition of being, the third to Divinity and to the eternally good being. The power of harmony is not a cause relating to Nature, for it creates no being from formless material; nor one which relates to Divinity, for it is not in the first place a cause of eternal being. We have instead to do with Reason, the middle one of the three causes, which does good in both directions. For it belongs eternally to the gods, who remain forever the same, while Nature on the contrary is nowhere and never so. Now the cause belonging to Reason divides into Intellect, which refers to divine Form; Art, which refers to Reason in the actual sense of the word; and Practice, which refers to Nature.

As we can see, the power of harmony seeks in all this its special task. Reason, regarded simply and generally, is the creator of order and conformity; the laws of harmony are valid in the field of acoustics, just as those of sight are for visible things and those of judgment for all that is graspable by intellect. The power of harmony establishes in acoustics the rules which we call harmonic consonance; and this occurs partly through theoretical discovery of the correct ratios with the aid of intellect, and partly through successful cultivation of these discoveries with the aid of practice.² Reason generally finds the Beautiful through theoretical speculation, then confirms it through its means of expression (the activity of the hands), then through practice molds the formless material into conformity with itself. Hence it goes without saying that the science which is common to all developments of reason, namely Mathematics, is concerned not only with the theoretical investigation of the Beautiful, as some would believe, but also with the exhibition and practical employment of those things whose evaluation falls within its realm.

The power of harmony uses as a kind of tool or servant the two highest and most wonderful of our senses, Seeing and Hearing, which hearken most of all to the ruling part of the Soul, and which do not judge objects so much by desire as by beauty. One can find for each of the senses particular differences in perception, e.g., for sight, white and black; for hearing, high and low; for smell, fragrant and stinking; for taste, sweet and sour; for touch, soft and hard, and, by Zeus! for every sense pleasure and displeasure. But no one would use the words beautiful or ugly in connection with the senses of touch, taste, or smell: only of visible and audible things, as for instance a form and a melody, or the movement of the stars and the acts of men. Therefore these senses are also the only ones which support the reasoning part of the soul with their respective perceptions, as if they were truly sisters. That which is only visible manifests also to hearing with the help of the latter’s medium of expression [speech]; that which is only audible manifests to sight with the help of writing; and thus each of these senses often achieves more than if it had only conveyed its own impressions. For example, that which is to be communicated through speech is made easier for us to learn and remember by figures and letters, and that which we grasp through the sight is made more lively through poetic form: such as the view of a sea, the aspect of a place, a battle, the outward symptoms of mental states; so that by this means one’s whole soul is brought into a certain mood, just as if one had seen it all with one’s own eyes.

The fact that one need not grasp the object of a sense with that sense alone, but that each may rival the other in order to find out and seize everything which fits its own function, is particularly valid in the case of beauty and utility. It is so in the most rational of the relevant sciences, namely Astronomy, which is concerned with the sight and the movement of heavenly bodies which are only visible, and Harmonics, which is concerned with hearing and the movement of things which are only audible, namely sounds. Both employ as uncontradictable helpmeets Arithmetic and Geometry, in order to measure the quantity and quality of the principal movements. They are, so to speak, cousins, for they stem from the sister senses, sight and hearing, and have as their foster mothers Arithmetic and Geometry, to which they are related.³

Harmonic Power Dwells within Everything which is Complete by Nature, and Appears Most Clearly in the Human Soul and in the Movements of the Stars

Chapter 4. From these discussions it follows that the power of harmony belongs to the causes which are founded upon reason, in that it produces equality of movements and—since its theoretical science is a form of mathematics—is concerned with the mathematical ratios perceptible by the ear. Its goal, therefore, is to regulate practical activity with an orderly influence consequent upon its theories. Here we must also mention that, like all similar powers [of the soul], this one necessarily dwells within everything which has any movement in itself, however insignificant. It is especially found, in its highest degree, in those phenomena which are by nature complete and rational, which then possess this quality inherently. Only in such phenomena can it confirm, beyond doubt and at the highest possible level, the universal agreement of the ratios which instill conformity and order in different formations.

Everything that is governed by natural law partakes of some rational order with regard to its movements and the object of its movements. To the degree that this [rational order] is perceptible in its orderly rhythm, so it becomes for these phenomena their mother, nurse, and healer, and everywhere causes what one may call beauty. But if anything is deprived of this indwelling power, then everything is reversed, so far as this may be, and its course becomes worse and worse. This power is imperceptible in those movements which change the object itself, in which because of its indefinite character neither its quantity nor its quality can be defined; but it is seen clearly in those [movements] which come forth of its own fashioning. The latter, as we have said, applies to those [movements] which are most complete and rational, like the movements of the stars in the divine realm and those of the soul in the human realm. For only these two partake of the original and noblest movement—the spatial one—and are at the same time rational. [Harmonic power] reveals and informs us, as far as man can grasp, that tones are ruled by certain harmonic relationships. We will understand this by investigating separately each of these forms; and so we turn first to the movements of the human soul.

How Do the Consonant Intervals Correspond to the Original Diversity of the Soul’s Powers, and to Their Natural Divisions?

Chapter 5. The original powers of the soul are three: the power of Thought, the power of Feeling, and the power of Life. The original identical and consonant intervals are also three: the octave identity and the consonances of fifth and fourth. One can therefore compare the octave to the power of thought—for in both there prevails simplicity, equality, and equivalence—, the fifth to the power of feeling, and the fourth to the power of life. The fifth is closer to the octave than the fourth, and sounds better because its surplus [ ³/2] is closer to unity. Even so, the power of feeling is closer to thought than is the power of life, since it partakes to a certain extent of consciousness. Some things have being but no feeling; others have feeling but no thought. On the other hand, all things that feel also have being, and all that have thought also possess feeling and being. So in harmony, where the fourth is present there is not necessarily a fifth, nor where the fifth is, an octave; but a fifth always contains a fourth, and an octave both fifth and fourth. The point is that the powers of life and feeling correspond to the incomplete emmeleis intervals and their combination, and the power of thought to the complete one.

One can divide the soul’s power of life further into three, just as the fourth breaks down into three intervals. They are the three stages of life: Growth, Maturity, and Decline. The power of feeling similarly divides into four, as does the fifth into four intervals; they are the powers of Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, and Tasting (but we regard the sense of Touch as common to them all, since all perception takes place with some assistance from touch).⁴ Lastly, the power of thought has a sevenfold division,⁵ corresponding to the seven intervals of the octave. These are the faculties of Imagination, for the analysis of what is perceived; Understanding, for its first formation; Reflection, for retaining and inculcating what is formed; Meditation, for recalling and investigating it; Opinion, for superficial conjecture; Reason, for critical evaluation, and finally Knowledge, for grasping it in truth and clarity.

We could also divide our soul’s powers in another way: into Reason, Emotion, and Desire. We compare reason, on account of the above-named correspondences, to the octave; emotion, which stands quite close to it, to the fifth; and desire, which is somewhat lower, to the fourth.⁶ Everything else that arises from the respective values and compasses of these intervals could also be derived from them: we would then find that the clearest distinctions within the original unities (virtues) would coincide with the number of those within each of the first symphonious intervals. Among tones, too, consonance is a virtue and dissonance an evil; and, mutatis mutandis, the same applies to the human soul: virtue is a kind of consonance of the soul, evil a dissonance. What is common to both [tones and soul] is that a harmonically regulated ratio of parts is natural, and an unregulated one against Nature.

One might also say that Desire has three virtues, comparable to the three intervals of the fourth: they are Temperance, when it is a question of spurning pleasure; Self-control, when one has to bear privations; and Modesty, when one must protect oneself from dishonor. Feeling, moreover, has four virtues comparable to the four intervals of the fifth, and these are Mildness, when one must not be carried away by anger; Courage, when one has to look imminent evil fearlessly in the eye; Boldness, when one must spurn dangers; and Tolerance, when one has to bear hardship. The seven virtues of Reason may be given as follows: Perspicacity, for quick understanding; Subtlety, whereby one detects truth; Presence of mind, to see through things; Insight, to judge rightly; Wisdom, to know all; Prudence, to act practically; Experience, to live simply.⁷

In measuring the harmonic ratios, furthermore, it is necessary to establish first the identical ones, next the consonant and the emmeleis; for an insignificant fault in